Summary — After a long period of obsolescence nation is today a central issue in public debates and scholarship works, in Italy too. This circumstance is not casual: several factors and phenomena in international world as well as in Italy are strongly tied with this revival (collapse of sovietic block; difficulties of european construction; localism; problems of citizenship systems). Anyway, the revival of nation poses some important conceptual questions and empirical ones: how can we think today about national identity and membership? Is there in Italy a sense of national identity/membership? In the case, refers it to ethno-cultural tradition or to political-civic one? Recalling the results of a recent empirical test we suggest to look at italian "national identity as a cocktail" composed with many different ingredients rather than a monolithic image of one or another kind. This conclusion rises the necessity to put forward re-elaboration of theoretical instruments for analyzing ways and motives through which people should or should not keep on living together as a nation.